Might be in the wrong forum but here goes anyway
New owner operator here, and a very fretful one at that. I'll try and be as brief as possible.
I've been running a new 2016 Peterbilt 567 with a Cummins ISX 15 550/2050 for exactly a year now during which I've put on 182,000 km. For about the first 80,000 of these I've used the manufacturer recommended 10w30 oil, but for the latter 100,000 I accidentally switched to 15w40.
To explain: I started taking it in for oil changes at Cullen Diesel Power who are my neck of the woods' Detroit specialists but are perfectly capable of doing an oil change and grease job on a Peterbilt or Kenworth. They have a hell of a deal on for that service right now, have for awhile and are a short walk from my house so it makes a lot of sense for me to use them. HOWEVER, since I started using them, they assumed I wanted 15w40 and honestly I kept meaning to ask or look for a detailed breakdown of the materials used but it kept escaping my mind for quite the period of time. As a single man new to both owning a truck and a home, I can be a little frazzled and overwhelmed sometimes.
Just yesterday I had two engine lights come on, these were SPN 5397 and SPN 81 pertaining to "too frequent active regens" and "exhaust trap door blockage" respectively. Now, I shouldn't need a DPF cleaning yet and I'm at 2800 hours only so far but I spoke to Peterbilt today and said "Hey, I know 10w30 is the go-to for these engines but is 15w40 gonna cause me grief?" "Oh, you'll want to change that out next time for sure," they said, "better performance to be had from the 10w30 and its better on the after treatment system..."
Better on the after treatment system, eh? Interesting / terrifying coincidence right there.
I pull a fully loaded b-train all week, so 140,000 lbs and my dispatch team is gracious enough to keep me loaded for 90% of the week or more. I grease the whole truck every other weekend but do the driveline every weekend since my routes have 13% pulls. Oil changes in the summer were every 28,000km, Cummins' earliest recommended service interval for a severe duty truck, but now that it's winter I do them every 20,000 since my miles are down but idle time is up and I want to keep it from getting too dirty. Some may say it's aggressive but my approach this far has been maximize up-time even if it means spending just a little bit more servicing early for insurance. To get my DPF issues resolved I will be missing my first day of work in a year on Monday and 182,000 km seems early for this.
Has my oil blunder affected the life of my truck?
Cummins ISX oil EPA 2013, have I caused a major problem?
Discussion in 'Ask An Owner Operator' started by TiredIron, Feb 3, 2018.
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